Housekeeping: I’m offering a new writing class this fall.
Taste is Character: Writing Pop Culture, Writing Fiction: What does it mean to write critically about pop culture in fiction or creative non-fiction? What happens when a character encounters a song, movie, TV show, or book? How can writing about culture allow us to write more deeply about identity, desire, memory, and the world around us? This won’t be me teaching you how to make pop culture references. It’s about how to make cultural criticism function as fiction. We’ll study short fiction, creative non-fiction, and excerpts from novels. Six weeks this fall. More information here.
Last week, President Trump shut down the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for two years, allegedly to turn “a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center” into “the finest Performing Arts Facility of its kind.” Built as a living memorial to John F. Kennedy, it opened in 1971 and became a space for theatre, ballet, classical music, jazz, and the residence of the National Symphony Orchestra. Most of this stemmed from the fact that our tacky current President wanted to remake the Center in his own honor, hosting conservative events and performers and even replacing the donated art with art selected by his own patrons. Turning a living memorial of a former President who was assassinated before Charlie Kirk made it cool is the epitome of loser shit.
If we’re being honest, I never cared that much about the Kennedy Center. I’ve attended once, on a trip to Washington, D.C., with an ex-boyfriend to see The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. In a recent conversation with playwright Max Wolf Friedlich on my podcast Feedback, he agreed: “I don’t give a fuck about the Kennedy Center. I wish that our government supported the arts more than it does. It’s such a distraction. We need to create social cache in supporting art.”
During a conversation with the cast and director of Ragtime earlier this year, before its Tony win for Best Revival of a Musical, I even referred to the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts as our new national theatre. At least shows there are more accessible and cool than Kennedy Center shows. And they’re in New York, which means Trump can’t get his grubby hands on the programming.
Ragtime is a musical about the promise and failures of the American identity at the dawn of the 20th century, which seems like a pretty apt description for another social institution known as The Real Housewives of New York. The resurgence of one of Bravo’s flagship series has been welcome, but there are still a few kinks to work out. The show might’ve once been described as “the most important anthropological documentation of modern women that we have,” at least in terms of class and upward mobility amongst a sample set of older white women in New York. But as of now, the show is still struggling to depict these women honestly. Or rather, the women are struggling to depict themselves honestly. But maybe that’s a good thing?
First of all, the series has its own living memorial to JFK! Carole Radziwill. Last week, Carole balked at Jessel Taank bringing up the concept of Carolyn Bessette Summer and asking her invasive questions about the Kennedys.